


Headstrong

by Xero_Sky



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Hope, M/M, Mental Illness, body negativity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22841245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xero_Sky/pseuds/Xero_Sky
Summary: He was the youngest pilot.The one with the most kills.One of the pilots who'd saved the world.Is it any wonder he can't deal with the aftermath?
Relationships: Raleigh Becket/Chuck Hansen
Comments: 5
Kudos: 79





	Headstrong

After the shower, Chuck catches sight of himself and turns toward the mirror with a sigh.

He hates his body. Cataloging his faults is almost compulsive now.

He hates the paleness of his skin. Hates the stretch marks on his legs from growing up too fast and putting on too much muscle for a kid that young.

Hates that even though the job keeps him in excellent shape, peacetime is bringing softness to his abs anyway.

Hates how his butt tends towards flatness no matter how many squats he does.

Hates his chest hair, which he still has to shave for the circuit suits, and how it always comes back in sparse and scraggly.

Hates the way his left calf is still misshapen from the muscle tear when he was 18.

And the scars. Christ, all the fucking scars.

There are the burn scars from where the feedback overloaded the circuit suit, leaving a tangle of dark and shiny angular lines across his chest and legs and shoulders and arms, some of them deep,

The tidy white scar around his shoulder from the time Striker's damaged harness had nearly torn his arm off.

The one on his chin and the one under his eye from an off-base bar brawl in his teens.

The whip-thin scar across his throat left by the chain as his tags were ripped right off his neck in a different fight, in a different bar, years later.

The scar down his forearm that he doesn't remember getting and still insists, especially to himself, has nothing whatsoever to do with any goddamned suicide attempt.

The oddly-textured patch on his upper arm that once was home to Lucky Seven's emblem, a tattoo he'd taken off himself with a wire wheel one night, drunk and 16 and handy with a grinder, because Herc had finally told him what Uncle Scott had done. Herc hadn't said a word after he'd come back; he'd just taken him to the infirmary to get patched up.

Chuck knows what this kind of inventory does to him by now, and he turns his head away, closing his eyes. They won the war, saved the world, and still he does this to himself, tearing himself apart the way he had as a teenager, desperate to live up to his father's reputation. Was he big enough to handle the harness rig yet? Could he hide all the scars under his uniform so the cameras wouldn't see? Did he look like _Ranger_ Hansen yet?

Had he earned the life he'd stolen from his mother?

A wave of self-loathing breaks over him.

He knows exactly how this shite goes, and it's dark. It starts with how awful he is, and ends with a feeling of failure so profound that he feels like his guts've been torn out. He can go about his life pretending that he hasn't been cored out and left hollow, but the effort is nearly overwhelming. The doc calls them 'depressive episodes'; Chuck calls them Hell.

Fuck, he hates all this garbage in his head.

He can try to get out from under it, though. There'd been so much therapy after Pitfall, so many attempts to fix the PPDC's most famous child soldier, that he's learned techniques despite himself. He focuses.

_Breathe in._

_Breathe out._

Think about the mechanics of getting on with his life. about drying off and finding something suitable to wear for tonight, something nice but not uncomfortable, or something casual but not too comfortable.

Think about what he has to do at work, about the reports that have to be written tomorrow, the testing that's gonna have to be re-run because Alvarez is a dumbass.

Think about going outside, up on the top of the dome, maybe, and letting the free air roll over his skin.

It's hard. He'd actually trained to control his thoughts and emotions, because jaegers magnified every little movement to the outside world, and yet it's a struggle to get himself back in hand when he's like this. It's a struggle to find his equilibrium.

He doesn't care about the names and diagnoses they've given him, because they don't mean anything he understands. He's only trying the meds out because Herc's asked him to, and he doesn't know what they're doing to him.

He knows how to fight, though. He's always known that.

 _Breathe_.

*****

When strong arms suddenly wrap around him from behind, Chuck doesn't startle. He didn't exactly expect it, but he knows a gift when he's given one.

He meets Raleigh's eyes in the mirror.

They haven't been together long enough for anything to be taken for granted. Raleigh understands, though. Chuck's sure of that much.

There's a firm but gentle kiss to the back of his neck that even now sends a tremor down his spine. He's always been weak for that.

“Should I cancel?” Raleigh offers.

Raleigh has never judged him, or pitied him.

Not when his body was broken. Not now when his brain is.

He will never understand how he's been so lucky.

He smiles, and sure, it's kind of weak and a lot crooked, but it's genuine.

“And deprive them of their chance to tell us the big news?”

“They'll live,” Raleigh says, turning Chuck around towards himself, away from the mirror.

He'd gotten home earlier than Chuck and is already dressed, but there's still a damp warmth clinging to his skin. He smells fantastic, and Chuck pulls him in a little closer.

“Your brother will lose his shit if he has to keep quiet for another week, and you know it.”

Chuck leans in, and Raleigh couldn't have torn his eyes away for anything.

“Don't talk to me about Yancy when I'm about to kiss you,” he mumbles.

And he does kiss him, just like that.

It's good, but it's not magic. It helps, though, as Chuck tries to shake off his mood. It always helps. Raleigh kisses him like he's the best thing in the world, the only thing, and it doesn't matter if it's a peck on the lips or a breathless kiss at the height of pleasure. He can always read Raleigh's heart in these moments, and if the knowledge of how much he's loved doesn't cure him, at least it shows him that there's a way back.

It'll be enough.

It has to be.

******

The restaurant is loud and he can barely hear a thing as Yancy tells them the deep, dark secret.

Chuck holds Raleigh's hand, fingers interlaced. They share a glance, still wondering if they should pretend they don't already know Herc and Yancy are finally getting married. It hasn't been a secret from their co-pilots for weeks. That hadn't come from the drift; Yancy has been _glowing_.

It turns out not to matter, though, because Herc's eyes have always been too goddamned sharp. He has them figured out immediately, and he says as much.. He just smiles and shakes his head, while Yancy claims outrage. Raleigh, who's never going to learn to ignore his brother's challenges, leaps to their defense.

Chuck laughs, tipping back his beer. He catches his father's eye, and Herc raises an eyebrow at him. Chuck nods.

_You alright?_

_Yeah._

It's true. He's happy, right here and right now. Happy for his dad, happy for the four of them. Happy that, by some fucking miracle, he has a family he can keep now. Happy because Raleigh is here with him, holding his hand.

Maybe tomorrow he won't be alright, or maybe tbe day after. He'll never know until it happens again. Right now, though, he knows one thing, and it's all that really matters.

Whatever happens, he won't be alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Men suffer from body negativity and depression at rates similar to women. We spend so much time in fandom talking about the bodies of characters of extremely fit actors; I wondered what it would be like to actually deal with so much scarring.
> 
> I rarely ever write a sad ending, though, so of course Raleigh turned up. Chuck will have to fight the good fight, but not alone. <3


End file.
